Several types of machines exist on the market for removing tile and the like from a floor. There are also machines specially designed for re-surfacing floors such as wooden floors. However, there do not seem to be any machine that combines the two operations. In known floor covering scraping or removing machines there is an absence of a machine counterbalancing system to adjust the bias of the scraping elements against the floor. Also in known such machines, the cutter inserts must be replaced very often especially when removing ceramic tiles. Such known machines also lack a safety system to stop rotation of the cutters when exposed to excessive counterforce to thereby prevent burning out of the electric motor used for driving the cutters.